So into whose pocket did the extra $90,000 go? That is hard to say, as it was in the case of $85 million which a Paraguayan entity borrowed from a consortium of banks in Switzerland in the mid-1980s, providing a government guarantee and written ministerial undertakings. None of that money was ever spent on the infrastructure projects for which it was raised. It disappeared.

A new Paraguayan government subsequently repudiated that debt and continues to refuse to repay it despite exhausting all legal channels of appeal following a Swiss Supreme Court judgment against it. The country has a history of one government reneging on the financial undertakings of a previous one. There are further claims of about $100 million in the pipeline in this category.

None of this would be of much concern for the rest of the financial world, if Paraguay were not just now planning to float its first public international bond issue in living memory. In the next few weeks, just before elections for a new government, it says it will raise $500 million in an operation managed by a U.S. bank to invest in infrastructure projects.

Paraguay will doubtless give a full account of all outstanding claims against it in the prospectus, and investors will no doubt give it a fair reading. They may also recall the old adage caveat emptor.